Russia HIV/AIDS cases rise from 30 in 1988 to 860,000 in 2014 — official

Nov 28 2014

TASS

The country shares one epidemiological space with such former Soviet republics as Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Armenia as many labor migrants came to Russia from these countries

Russia has seen a dramatic rise in the number of HIV/AIDS cases over the past 25 years, a Russian epidemiological control official said on Thursday.

“The number of HIV/AIDS-infected people has increased from 30 in1988 when the first HIV/AIDS case was registered in Russia to more than 860,000 HIV-infected people in 2014,” Larisa Dementieva, the deputy head of epidemiological control department at Russia’s consumer rights watchdog Rospotrebnadzor, said at a TASS hosted news conference on ways of fighting AIDS in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.

She said that Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Armenia had also seen a sharp rise in HIV/AIDS cases.

According to Vinay Saldana, director of the UNAIDS joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS, Russia shares one epidemiological space with these former Soviet republics as many labor migrants came to Russia from these countries.